This essay is written about the significance of associating (or avoiding the association of) one's past with one's present when one has experienced traumatic events. More specifically, it's about Charlotte Delbo's attempt to distance herself from her memories of World War IIconcentration camps at the same time that she attemps to allow her readers to experience her past. This is tricky and complex, but she pulls it off with style.

Aucun de nous ne reviendra (None of us will return) is the first book of the trilogy Auschwitz et après, published by Les Éditions de Minuit in Paris, and was written in 1970.

None of us will return is a book in which the presence of the collective subject is evident. Right away, one notes to use of "we" instead of "I" in almost all references to the prisoners, even though the book was written by an individual woman. But, if one looks at the sentences with more attention, there are many patterns that become apparent. Notably, the verb tense in relation to the subject of each sentence indicated the author's (and the other prisoners of the camp) attitude towards the future and the past, which changes according to the subject. Equally, one can imagine that the reason behind this elaboration on the collective subject is due to the fact that if these women had tried to identify themselves as individuals in the camps, they would not have survived.

The mental trauma resulting from being forced to massacre human beings was too difficult, even for the Nazis, so they did everything they possibly could in order to transform the prisoners of concentration and extermination camps into animals, or something less than human. Thus, the camps were a world organized to de-moralize its prisoners and drive each person to his or her own dehumanization. In order to avoid suffering from the loss of their humanity, it was necessary for the women with whom Delbo was imprisioned to think as a group. This necessity becomes more evident when Delbo writes "...we had lost all the senses of life. No one said 'I'm hungry. I'm thirsty. I'm cold.' Transfered to another world, we were all of a sudden submitted to the breathing of another world, to the living dead..." (55). No one spoke of herself and her needs, because they were not in the normal world where they were allowed to act in an individual manner. In the camps, the individuals (but not the groups) were transformed into animals by the Nazis.

But Delbo wrote about scenes where she acted like an animal. For example, in "The Thirst", she writes about one of the most fundamental and basic needs of all living things, even human beings. She is thirsty and she can think of nothing else. She wants to "...kneel next to the basin [of soapy herbal tea] and drink from it in the same manner as a dog" (116). When she thinks of water, she is "...ready to bound like an animal" (117). What's more, when she sees the tiny woman who has the same need as her, Delbo nonetheless drinks the water she managed to obtain herself and does not share any with the other prisoner. In fact, she says that the other prisoner will die soon anyway, so what is the use of sharing? She remains insensitive. Thirst renders her incapable of solidarity, because she has lost the ability to feel empathy or pity for others. Herein lies the difference between man and beast: humanity is defined by emotions and altruism, and when one loses these things, one is no longer human.

Different from most of the book, in this part Delbo uses the individual subject "I" instead of that of the collective, "we." She expresses her hopelessness, confusion, and it is evident that she is in danger of losing her humanity is she continues to think and behave as an individual. Towards the end of "The Thirst", her friends take care of her despite the fact that they do not have enough tea even for themselves. They help her because they want to fight for life, that of Delbo as well as their own. According to one survivor of a camp,

The women could not, like the men of certain camps, arm themselves and prepare for their liberation... Their priority was the fight for life, to survive, to maintain their dignity when faced with an enemy who wished nothing more than to degrade them. Solidarity lived in small groups of women prisoners (de Lauwe).

Except for "The Thirst" and a few other parts, the vast majority of the book uses the collective subject even though it would have been logical if Delbo had decided to use "I" instead of "we" in almost all cases, since she is the author and the experiences which she describes are her own. But in order to maintain the atmosphere of the time of the camp, she uses the collective subject to better illustrate the difference between the past and the present.

The difference between the verb tense (past tense, imperfect, plus-que-parfait or the present) in relation to the subject ("I" or "we") was not evident the first time I read the book. But after I re-read it much more carefully while searching for quotes, the difference became more clear. I noticed that for the most part, when Delbo speaks of the collectivity ("we") of the camp, she speaks as if she was still there, so she uses verbs in the present tense. But shen she speaks of herself as "I" in the camps, she often switches to verbs in the past tense.

For example, she says "We, by the window, we could see. We never turned our heads to the side" (29). She speaks as if she was still seated next to the window now, as if she could see the camp at the moment of her writing. Even the title; it is written in the future tense, even though the time of return has already passed. However, this collectivity in the present tense allows the reader to experience the events while they are relied, she makes the scenes come alive, and she allows for a deeper understanding. Naturally, the readers can never truly understand these experiences without having actually experienced them themselves, but the use of "we" at the same time as the use of the present tense helps to diminish the distance between reader and author.

But when Delbo speaks of herself during the time of the camp, she uses the past tense. For example, she says "I had been running without feeling the club, the belt which assaulted me. And then I had the desire to laugh" (64). The use of the plus-que-parfait instead of the present tense creates a distance between the past and the present of "I."

What is the significance of this difference? She still has the need to maintain her humanity in her memories, in her memory (wow that translates horribly). If she uses the past tense or the imperfect in this book, the reader cannot establish any sort of connection with Delbo. But because her memories are so strong even today, if she uses the present tense in the book, she cannot associate her individuality with the camp for fear of losing her humanity once again. So, she compromises with the use of the present tense with the collective subject.

In brief, Delbo and the women of the camp created an identity for the group where they let go of their individuality in order to survive under the Nazi system. By abandoning their individuality, they could maintain their humanity in solidarity. It was nothing other than the group mentality that prevented Delbo from dying from her insane thirst (where her individual need transformed her into an animal). Of course, this idea is very difficult to understand for the reader who has never experienced a camp like Delbo. Thus, she decided to use the collective subject with the present tense to diminish the distance between reader and author and the events of the camp. But at the same time, she needs to protect her memory against the past, and thus she creates a distance between herself and the camp by using the past tense with the individual subject. With the manipulation of verb tenses, Delbo can avoid falling into her memories while she still permits the reader to better understand that which she experienced.